I'm currently in these United States of yours, about 1 hour south of Portland. Driving to Solarfest tomorrow in Madras Oregon for the eclipse on Monday morning.

Any of you guys doing anything?

I can answer general eclipse questions if you have any until tonight, unlikely to have internet connection on Sunday or Monday. I strongly recommend you go and get into the path of totality if you can - just a partial eclipse is nothing particularly special. But if you haven't made plans already and you don't live close, then it's probably going to be too late for you.

I was on Iceland for the solar eclipse in March 2015 and it was pretty cool. It was at its peak around 10:00, so I didn't really notice much difference until I put the glasses on and saw this: http://i.imgur.com/uMO1Aiy.jpgiirc it reached 97% at its peak in Reykjavik.

I went to some tiny town in Idaho (population like 500) and got to see totality. Without the glasses you couldn't really tell anything was going on other than it was getting slightly dimmer and much colder. Then it suddenly got really cold and was visibly getting darker by the second, the horizon all around turned red, the planets and some stars were visible and the sun was replaced by a giant ominous glowing ring in the sky. xD

The sun is much bigger than I expected xD Also the temperature difference definitely shows how much heat we get from the sun, since it being covered up a bit makes it freezing almost immediately.

well I'm glad some people here bothered to make the effort. I hope you enjoyed it, I certainly did.

Took me 6 hours to drive back to Portland, missed my original flight to Oakland but got put on standby and got to Phoenix on Monday night, and Oakland at 12pm today (Tuesday). There were 3 seats available on the plane and the group of 4 Japanese tourists ahead of me (stupidly) decided not to split up, so I got on the flight. Didn't cost me a penny extra so that was good.

There was never any real risk from those fires. Smoke simply doesn't get that high in the air, unless the fire is really close by. The smoke was clearly visible in the horizon and obscured the views of Mt Hood and Jefferson but no risk to the sun.

2028. That eclipse is on 22nd July, and although it is going to go directly over Queenstown and Dunedin, since it's winter it's likely to be cloudy, and it happens about 4:30 which is very close to sunset, so not worth bothering with in NZ IMO.

Don't know what cities it gets close to in Oz, maybe Sydney on the way to NZ. Starts in the northwest and then goes down to NZ, so will go right over the center of the country and outback, so likely good clear skies available there. I can imagine Ayres Rock will be a spectacular spot, if it gets coverage. Maximum eclipse is 5 minutes. Both I've seen have been about 2 minutes, which is good, but longer would be ideal.

There's a 7 minute eclipse across America in 2522.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 23 2017, 1:19 pm by Lanthanide.